I know it is late again, but life and reasons etc got in the way. I don't feel 100% about the characterisation here, so any feedback on how Steve was written or whether people still like Cora would be great. I promise the interesting stuff is coming soon – unless you like history in which case heyhey it's already here!

Thank you to everyone who followed, favourited and reviewed, including TortoisetheStoryteller and Armand!

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.

Enjoy!

Coraline blinked open her eyes to the sound of pages rustling. Disorientated, she staggered to her feet, tasting the arid tang of sleep on her tongue as she pivoted on the spot.

She was in a library. Around her, shelves rose up to the globed ceiling above her, each teaming with manuscripts bound in various shades of tanned leather. Jutting out of them were small scraps of paper and even more frequently, yellow post its, all inscribed with her scribble scrawl writing.

Coraline sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. She knew where she was now. Navigating herself to the nearest table, she slumped into the overly ornate seat and put her head in her hands.

She was in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Which meant she wasn't there at all. She was dreaming.

"Ugh," She groaned as she buried her head in her arms on the table." This is getting ridiculous. I can't go five minutes without being swamped in a history book in the real world, and now they're following me into my dreams too?"

Weakly, she swatted at an offending pile of textbooks that had materialised on the table in front of her.

"Be gone," She muttered, and was annoyed to not hear what she was sure would have been a satisfactory crunch as they fell off the table.

Peaking up from behind her pyjama clad arms, she noted with a sense of exhausted disinterest that the books were hovering in mid air. In normal situations, this would have at least mildly amused her. Now though- after one week of forcing herself and the Captain through a decade worth of political, economic and social change- any tolerance for the weird things her unconscious mind created for her to marvel out had gone rapidly downhill.

It wasn't even that she didn't like the 1950s. They were an interesting period of history – often overlooked in favour of the excitement of the conflicts that followed it. But trying to traverse over every slightly incredulous moment of American decision making over that decade with a man who was a friendly but undeniably massive patriot was proving not only slow but also worthy of several late night headaches when she had to try to phrase something in a way that wouldn't cause his face to screw up in that almost imperceptible way that meant he wasn't happy.

Coraline sighed again as she considered the Captain. He had been nothing but courteous, especially considering she could barely open the door to the interrogation room that had been converted to her 'classroom' by means of what seemed like several thousand textbooks strewn all over the desk and a large whiteboard in one corner acting as her paper. All the doors at the Triquetra were heavy, Cora presumed for some kind of fire safety. Not that that made it any easier to open them with only one arm, while her dominant hand lay immobile in the sling across her body. More than once the Captain had come up behind her while she struggled to get some leverage against the door's weight, leaning over her as if to emphasis the height difference and opening the door so effortlessly that she had to question whether it was really closed in the first place.

Still, however courteous he was, there was no denying that Captain Rogers didn't want to spend his days listening to her talk about the past. She could see it in his eyes, whenever he thought she'd turned to write something on the whiteboard which always prompted her to draw some silly cartoon with the board pen, hoping that her lopsided left handed doodles were enough to put even the hint of a smile on his face. She could hear it in his voice whenever she said something sarcastic, whenever she let a bit of her personality sneak through the professional façade all the suits and security codes were forcing her to keep up. He usually chuckled, or at least made an uncommitted effort to ask another question about whatever political treaty they were talking about, but there was something in the tone of his voice, something Cora couldn't quite place, that just added to her realisation that nothing she was saying was really sinking in.

Despite this, she had continued to meet with him twice a day, each time for four hours. Her reasoning for this was selfish, she recognised this. She needed the routine, as skewed as it was from her normal day to day existence, and hell, even if she didn't want to admit it, she needed Captain Rogers too. He was a constant, sturdy presence – a bland expression to look at every day from behind a textbook. He was physically there in front of her even when everything else she knew was moving in circles around her mind.

Coraline didn't want to face any kind of emotional attachment to the man she was essentially tutoring, Not only was it ridiculous- she'd know him a week for God's sake - but it wasn't practical. Captain America was acting as the weight in the storm that was her own mind, adding in any extra reason to want to continue seeing him every day from 8am till 4pm would only bring in a new set of storm clouds.

Nevertheless, she had started to work on the written histories for him. Perhaps if she wasn't the one telling him things, he might get something out of it. She'd already written up till 1975, typed of course because she didn't want to inflict the horror of her barely legible left handed handwriting on the poor man. Sleeping had taken second place to writing, which at first hadn't been too much of a problem as the jetlag of her unplanned trip had made itself known on day three of her 'American Adventure'; but a week on and the books in her dream library were taunting her as they spun around her in circles.

The young woman moaned into her arms, thankful at least that dream Cora didn't have the same dislocated shoulder that her real life alter-ego did. She just wanted to sleep properly for five minutes-

With a start, Cora was drawn out of her dream library musings by the sound of feet thundering along the hallway outside her room. While Captain America got his own flat, the historian had been allocated one room leading off of the barracks deep underneath the Triquetra's maze-like structure. The changing of shifts at around daybreak was a more effective alarm clock than any phone setting could offer so as the feet continued to stomp past on the way to the canteen or gym or wherever else everyone seemed to be going at 6am.

Muttering plans to burn all the textbooks just to get them to stop haunting her sleep, Cora dressed groggily after braving the always cold shower in the gym locker rooms. Thankfully the main rush of people had been gone by the time she had dragged her bare feet along the corridor to the gym, but after being again blasted with cold water upon turning on the water, she was starting to wonder whether personal boundaries and the privacy of an empty room was really worth the freezing wake up call.

Her hair was still damp as she navigated the now familiar twists and turns that led her up to the interrogation room. She'd skipped breakfast in favour of finishing the 70s, which she knew wasn't in her best interests but clutching the printed off booklets as she walked was making up for it at least partially. She was vaguely aware that the tip of her braid had snaked its way around her shoulders and was making part of 1963 damp, but she made no effort to sweep the russet hair away from her face, because her mind was already calculating how long it would take to get to the present day if she kept up her rigorous writing schedule.

30 years in the 4 days since she had decided to write everything down and save her breath was 7 and a bit years a day and that had included all the events that started the Cold War and the complete Vietnam War as well. When writing that particular booklet, Cora had felt a little bad to be offloading such a difficult subject onto the Captain in such blasé bullet point notes, especially considering the tenseness of his shoulders and the way he had gritted his teeth when she had explained the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that had brought the USA's war in the East to an end. But at the same time, if she could continue to write nearly 8 years a day (which was essentially an hour a year by her typing standards and if she continued her schedule of 5pm till midnight) she could be finished with the rest of the 20th century in just under 5 days. 5 more days and she could be home, maybe even sooner if she pulled a few all-nighters along the way. If she could clear the 90s by tomorrow-

"Miss Quinn," Captain Rogers tapped her on the shoulder as she all but blazed past the room. He had watched her walk, head down and expression glazed, all the way up the corridor, and so hadn't been so surprised when she didn't slow down to go in. With one arm strapped to her chest, and the other clutching a thick stack of papers, she appeared smaller than usual, more drawn into herself. He had noticed that she was getting quieter; her voice less full of mirth and more full of the kind of exhaustion that Steve knew came from the early stages of giving up. She'd tried to hide it, but no amount of awful doodling or sarcastic comments about dictators he hadn't ever heard of could cover up the fact that he had returned from the lunchbreak to find her barely awake scouring over another textbook, and that as he stopped her from wandering off to wherever her clouded thoughts were taking her, the shadows under her eyes were darker than before.

Coraline looked up, taking a few seconds before she snapped back into focus and cleared her throat.

"Good morning Captain Rogers. I have something for you."

She thrust the wad of papers in his direction with her good hand, her face impassive as he shuffled them back into a semblance of an order and scanned the first one.

'1945-50…' it read in bold typed letters.

"I…uh…wrote up everything we had covered, and also everything that I would have gotten on to. It goes up to 1975 here, all bullet point notes so it shouldn't be too much different to reading mission briefings. I'm finishing the rest now, so you should be all caught up, or at least able to be, in the next week or so."

Sure enough, as Steve flicked through the booklets, he noted each section organised by date. There were a couple of booklets titled with wars, but he snapped the whole lot shut before he could read too much into them. The thought of further conflicts after the horrors he had seen made his heart fall. The Cold War, as far as Coraline had explained it, didn't involve any actual fighting, but clearly that was about to change.

"I don't know if we'll be able to cover all of this in a week," Steve mused as he looked up at the historian in front of him. She did look tired, which shocked him slightly. She had at least been trying to cover it before, but now she was fooling no one. Her hair was plaited but messily, her face was pale and without any hint of a smile. Her whole posture screamed for sleep, and as he looked at her, her shoulders slumped as if to agree with him.

"No, I know progress has been slow and boring," She didn't give him time to deny it, which he would do because he was such a gentleman. They hadn't even got onto technology yet, and any interesting topics such as music or fashion hadn't been reached with so much changing in America let alone the rest of the world after the war had ended.

"I don't know whether it's my delivery or my accent," Coraline continued quietly, "But I know you are not happy and would rather be elsewhere so I thought I'd give you the option to be. You can read these in the evening; you could even skip bits if you wanted to. History isn't everyone's thing so already you know more than most people around here do. As long as you have a basic idea of what happened, you should be fine."

She smiled lightly, while inwardly stifling a yawn.

"Your accent?" Steve was trying to comprehend what it was that the historian was saying, while a small part of him was full of a sinking feeling as it realised.

"I've noticed Captain Rogers, you look sad when you think I can't see you. I don't know who it was in your past that made you react like that. It really isn't my place to pry, or believe whatever any propaganda might tell me, but there is no point continuing to catch you up on what you missed when it is only reminding you of who you miss instead. I hope you understand."

She looked up at him reproachfully, and without really wanting to he nodded.

"Yeah I get it. You are a good teacher, Coraline," She smiled without really realising as he said her name- and then kicked herself back into professionalism.

"You are a very patient listener Captain Rogers," Steve's own face momentarily flickered with something else as she didn't use his name. Maybe it was a smile; it was gone too soon for Cora to see.

"Right," She brushed the hair out pf her head before offering her hand. "It was a pleasure to meet you Captain."

Steve shook her hand lightly, while his internal monologue screamed to stop her.

"I hope the 21st century treats you well," She smiled again, trying to put as much effort into it as she could, before turning on her heels and heading back down the corridor.

She had almost gotten to the turning that led her back down to her room, when his voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Peggy, her name was Peggy."

She turned around, confusion clear on her features. Steve was loping towards her, all but skidding to a stop in front of her.

She looked up into his eyes, her green eyes meeting his blue. The ghost of a question was visible in her expression but he didn't let her answer, not while he had this bout of Captain America courage running through his veins.

"Her name was Peggy Carter, and she would be giving me hell if I let you walk away now. So," He faltered then, but a chastising glare from the photo in his compass that had flitted its way to the front of his vision had him continuing in one long stream.

"So whad'ya say we get out of here, find some decent food to eat, or maybe coffee if you like coffee, or not if you don't but I don't think you've been out much and the history isn't going anywhere so we could take the day off and escape for a bit, if you wanted to that is?"

Coraline looked mildly shocked, though it was more from Steve's sudden outburst than the words he had been saying.

She was still processing exactly what it was he was asking her when she was nudged by the Captain, who was now wearing a nervous smile.

"Come on Doc, don't make me wait…" And then almost to himself, "I've done enough of that."

Coraline smiled a proper smile this time, which in turn made Steve smile back. Shyly, she moved to link her good arm through his, before gesturing weakly with her sling in the direction of the elevator to the outside world.

"Lead the way, Captain Rogers.

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